In an ongo­ing series of arti­cles, IBM and sub­ject mat­ter experts dis­cuss the impor­tance of clean core solu­tions. Among the views to date: Clean Core is about code mod­ern­iza­tion as well as chal­lenges found in the lack of data qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy; process har­mo­niza­tion; and process agili­ty. (See pre­vi­ous com­men­taries: Data Dri­ves Key Busi­ness Out­comes: The Trick Is Get­ting the Foun­da­tion Right and Clean Core Solu­tions and Phi­los­o­phy: Essen­tial to SAP S/4HANA Adop­tion.)

Here the prob­lem-approach dis­cus­sion dives more deeply into process agili­ty – one of the foun­da­tion­al rea­sons for a mod­ern clean core approach to tack­le the her­itage issues of SAP and busi­ness process lock-in. 

Prob­lem #1: Process agili­ty has always been a chal­lenge in how SAP solu­tions were designed and built. The over-engi­neer­ing of the sys­tems led to sys­tem-dri­ven ways of work­ing that didn’t real­ly rep­re­sent cur­rent or intend­ed ways of work­ing. The result: a lock-in type approach. 

For most orga­ni­za­tions, the answer has been to start again with a green­field imple­men­ta­tion. Yet, as not­ed in pre­vi­ous per­spec­tives, this is not always the best approach. Indeed for more orga­ni­za­tions on the move to SAP S/4HANA, green­field is no longer the default. Most now adopt more hybrid approach­es that use solu­tions such as Rapid Move from IBM in col­lab­o­ra­tion with our part­ner, SNP.

Prob­lem #2: Busi­ness func­tions, as a reac­tion to the lack of agili­ty and align­ment between the her­itage-SAP and aspi­ra­tional ways to work, make silo-deci­sions. The impact? A shift away from ERP-cen­tric­i­ty to a best-of-breed mix that can include Sales­force, Blue Yon­der, with SAP more as a backbone. 

This is not with­out com­plex­i­ty. A mul­ti-solu­tion mix height­ens inte­gra­tion and the need for uni­fied data mod­els (UDM). And it’s not just tech­ni­cal inte­gra­tion, it’s also process orches­tra­tion that becomes more important. 

Of course tech­ni­cal inte­grat­ed solu­tions can be deployed. The chal­lenge becomes how to mea­sure end-to-end process effi­cien­cy and/​or effec­tive­ness? Just as impor­tant, how do orga­ni­za­tions ensure they con­tin­u­ous­ly bench­mark, improve, and opti­mize ver­sus just inte­grat­ing the sys­tems in the land­scape? This is where the key role of process orches­tra­tion and the capa­bil­i­ties pro­vid­ed by SAP Work­flow Man­age­ment solu­tions, part of the Process Automa­tion suite, can enter in.

This prob­lem was also a key fac­tor cit­ed in ASUG 2022 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research. In results relat­ed to key chal­lenges sur­vey respon­dents expe­ri­enced in their SAP S/4HANA jour­neys, 15% not­ed incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty between prod­ucts, while 12% said tools selec­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, with more appli­ca­tions, oth­er chal­lenges were cit­ed includ­ing more updates, not­ed by 10%, and update chal­lenges, by 5%. What’s more, throw in issues like dis­trib­uted devel­op­ment, or the lack of it, then the shift to more het­eroge­nous appli­ca­tion land­scapes can be very chal­leng­ing in defin­ing the right enter­prise archi­tec­ture and main­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tices. (Here you’ll find more detailed high­lights from the 2022 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research cit­ed above.)

Prob­lem #3: Orga­ni­za­tions want to embrace SAP S/4HANA as a tru­ly busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty – not just a revised use of a trans­ac­tion­al system. 

When orga­ni­za­tions tack­le process design to dri­ve the busi­ness of tomor­row, they seek orches­trat­ed (not just inte­grat­ed) end-to-end enter­prise process­es with embed­ded intel­li­gence. They also seek to sim­pler, smarter, more con­nect­ed dig­i­tal­ized process­es, that rede­fine the ways of work­ing with more pro­duc­tive user behav­iors and, ulti­mate­ly, improved busi­ness outcomes. 

Again, this need to rede­fine ways of work­ing sur­faced in the ASUG Pulse study. Shift­ing to more stan­dard­ized and auto­mat­ed ways of work­ing was the goal for 50% of the respon­dents; 36% said the pri­ma­ry goal was to shift from man­u­al to dig­i­tal processes.

Over­come the Obstacles

Based on expe­ri­ence and, togeth­er with SAP, there are oppor­tu­ni­ties to over­come the chal­lenges described above, help­ing orga­ni­za­tions change from a trans­ac­tion­al ori­en­ta­tion into Intel­li­gent Enter­pris­es with Intel­li­gent Work­flow solu­tions for SAP. These are pow­ered by SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), specif­i­cal­ly SAP Work­flow Management.

Since its incep­tion, the IBM Evo­lu­tion Part­ner­ship with SAP^[1] has focused on intel­li­gent solu­tions based on BTP to dri­ve indus­try inno­va­tions that under­pin Indus­try Cloud solutions. 

An exam­ple helps con­vey the promise and progress. In work with Indus­tri­al Machin­ery orga­ni­za­tions in end-to-end work­flows, like lead-to-cash that sit above the likes of Sales­force, Ms Dynam­ics, CPQ, and Pric­ing Engines, as well as SAP. Then, embed­ded with AI and improved automa­tion, process­es, such as out­come-based billing, intel­li­gent pric­ing, intel­li­gent prod­uct con­fig­u­ra­tion, and oth­ers can be optimized.

Keys to Reorientation

There are key prin­ci­ples in this reori­en­ta­tion from trans­ac­tion­al excel­lence to intel­li­gent end-end work­flow solu­tions that relate to process archi­tec­ture. These include:

1. Adopt a de-cou­pled archi­tec­ture. This lets the same process be adopt­ed irre­spec­tive of the under­ly­ing appli­ca­tion found in mod­ern com­plex appli­ca­tion landscapes. 
2. Cre­ate Dig­i­tal Twins of the Process. Use orches­tra­tion solu­tions, like SAP Work­flow Man­age­ment, to do the tech­ni­cal design out the end-to-end flows, link­ing the steps in the process (via com­pos­able ser­vices) to the source sys­tem APIs. This sup­ports true process com­pos­abil­i­ty; the agili­ty need­ed to change things with­out re-engi­neer­ing the under­ly­ing core appli­ca­tion; and adher­ence to clean core principles.
3. Embed Moments that Mat­ter into the process flows. These are the steps in the process with poten­tial­ly the biggest oppor­tu­ni­ty to sim­pli­fy how work gets done through embed­ding automa­tion or devel­op­ing rules or machine learn­ing mod­els to aug­ment end-user deci­sions and achieve more pre­cise out­comes. This can have a direct impact of to improve KPIs.
   
   Work­ing with process opti­miza­tion teams that every day run process­es like finance, pro­cure­ment, order man­age­ment, on behalf of com­pa­nies across the globe, we’ve cap­tured Moments that Matter from more than 400 client con­ver­sa­tions and engage­ments. The moments that shift man­u­al work to more auto­mat­ed and intel­li­gent out­comes pow­ered, by data and AI, are built into tem­plate end-to-end process mod­els and solutions. 
4. Imple­ment a mod­el-to-min­ing cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous opti­miza­tion. Just mod­el­ling and exe­cut­ing a process is good, but it doesn’t ful­fil the full process opti­miza­tion life­cy­cle. Adopt­ing a true mod­el-to-min­ing ethos, using Process Con­trol Tow­er solu­tions, sup­port a shift to con­tin­u­ous advi­so­ry, bench­mark­ing the per­for­mance using SAP Sig­navio to give the busi­ness process insights that dri­ve con­tin­u­ous pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effec­tive­ness improvements.
   

When under­tak­ing ​“Big‑T” Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion, shift­ing from man­u­al to dig­i­tal process­es is more com­pli­cat­ed than cre­at­ing a few SAP Fiori’s. Like­wise, sim­ply automat­ing inef­fi­cient process­es leads to under­achieve­ment, per­haps a low­er quar­tile out­come a bit cheap­er and faster. It’s far eas­i­er to auto­mate con­sis­tent har­mo­nized process­es than the thou­sands of vari­ants in cur­rent use pri­or to clean core approaches. 

The shift to Intel­li­gent Enter­prise requires:

• The abil­i­ty to dri­ve true process agility
• Work orches­trat­ed across a hybrid appli­ca­tion landscape
• Process Con­trol Tow­er use, to not just see what’s hap­pen­ing in real-time, but to react and dri­ve con­tin­u­ous opti­miza­tion for the high­est lev­els of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and effi­cien­cy gains. 

Whether amidst or head­ing into an SAP S/4HANA jour­ney, don’t under­es­ti­mate the impor­tance of both clean core and the use of Process Con­trol Tow­ers to enable the true orches­tra­tion of work and dri­ve intel­li­gent, end-to-end out­comes that are the foun­da­tion for redefin­ing the new ways of working.

Allan Coul­ter is IBM Con­sult­ing Glob­al Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer for SAP Ser­vices and Scott Koren is Asso­ciate Part­ner, IBM Con­sult­ing, Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion Services.